SS-300P Modernity & the Slaughterhouse

3 Credits

The United States today produces and consumes more meat than ever, but most Americans live at an increasing geographic and perceptual distance from animals and the humans who work with them, relying on a system of industrial production and a complex division of labor for their daily meals. This course approaches the politics of this distribution of labor, violence, and human-animal relations from a site rarely considered in political analysis: the modern slaughterhouse. It engages with this institution as a historical and cultural object to ask broader questions about politics in the not-quite-post-industrial USA.